The Naval Research Laboratory
(NRL) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) have recently
completed a project to provide Web-based access to an important
body of scientific literature. During the past two years, the
two organizations have worked cooperatively to improve the availability
of AIP-published journals in a digital format.
During the project, NRL's Ruth
H. Hooker Research Library assisted the AIP in creating a digital
archive of eight core journals. NRL digitized these journals
by scanning their contents into high quality PDF files so that
they can be made available from the AIP's Web-based Online Journal
Publishing Service (OJPS) in a format consistent with that of
more recently published journals. In addition, AIP journals have
been added to the 220 journals mounted locally at NRL and searchable
through the Library's TORPEDO Ultra system. The successful
completion of this work extends AIP's digital journal archive
back to 1991.
"This project," says
Ms. Laurie E. Stackpole, NRL Chief Librarian, "demonstrates
that scholarly society publishers, like the American Institute
of Physics, and scientific research libraries, like NRL's, share
a deep commitment to the continuing availability of important
scientific publications. By working together, they can forge
relationships that not only benefit the participants, but that,
even more importantly, improve world-wide access to the results
of research, enhancing scientific productivity and fostering
creativity."
Mr. Tim Ingoldsby, Director of
Business Development for AIP, agrees, stating, "This joint
project allows AIP to greatly expand its back file of online
research literature, just in time to be utilized in exciting
publishing industry initiatives such as the CrossRef reference
linking service (http://www.crossref.org). In addition, the optically
character-recognized (OCR) text that is bundled with the PDF
files delivered by NRL will enable the AIP to seamlessly integrate
these retrospectively converted journals into our planned OJPS
enhancements, including full text searching."
Journals converted during the
project included: Applied Physics Letters, Computers in Physics,
Journal of Applied Physics, Journal of Chemical Physics,
Journal of Mathematical Physics, Physics of Fluids,
Physics of Plasmas, and Review of Scientific Instruments.
As part of the project, the publisher is providing NRL with current
PDF files for local mounting in TORPEDO Ultra.
Other journals available through
TORPEDO Ultra include American Physical Society journals in the
Physical Review series, including Physical Review Letters covering
the years 1985 to present, and 220 Elsevier Science journals
covering the years 1995 to present. Other information in TORPEDO
Ultra includes: 6,000 research reports, drawn from over 180,000
reports that the Library has scanned and stored digitally, NRL
press releases for the years 1968 to present, and a growing collection
of NRL-authored publications. All documents are stored in PDF
format and are full text searchable. TORPEDO is available to
NRL employees in Washington, DC, Stennis Space Center, Mississippi,
and Monterey, California, and to Office of Naval Research headquarters
staff in Arlington, VA.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is the Navy's full-spectrum corporate laboratory, conducting a broadly based multidisciplinary program of scientific research and advanced technological development. The Laboratory, with a total complement of nearly 2,500 personnel, is located in southwest Washington, D.C., with other major sites at the Stennis Space Center, Miss., and Monterey, Calif. NRL has served the Navy and the nation for over 85 years and continues to meet the complex technological challenges of today's world. For more information, visit the NRL homepage or join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
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